This is how much every second of your life is worth…
What if I were to tell you that every second of your life is worth thousands and thousands of bucks. No matter who you are and how much you earn a day, every second of your life is worth a huge amount!
If you don’t earn that money, then who does? Actually, many people. Who knows, you could be the reason hundreds of people have their jobs. Okay, let’s loosen the riddle now. Every second you spend on your phone, on any social media and messaging platform, someone’s gaining millions out of your time.
The ultimate aim of social media platforms is to make revenue out of your time. It can be in two ways : First and the most common way is offering their platform/service for free and pulling in advertisers to advertise on their platform for you to see. The longer you see these, the more tempted you are to check the advertiser.
Marketing has hugely evolved over the years, from trying to sell products to the audience that needs it to making you believe that you need something, that you actually don’t need at all. It’s all about powerful visuals and pulling in the desire inside you to the fore.
Say you see an advertisement for a fancy doll. At first sight, you would say you don’t need it, that it’s clutter and you already have many. The second time the same advert flashes in front of you, you start noticing how it is different from the one that you have, what is unique in it. The third time, you check it’s price and wonder whether it suits your budget. The fourth time you see it, you would already have allocated a part of your budget for it and drool at how beautiful it looks, sub-consciously convincing yourself that you indeed need it. That is the magic of marketing — creating powerful images inside your mind, filling it with all the right elements to make yourself convince that you need it.
Say you finally buy the doll. You would be all excited and tempted for the first two days. The third day, all the excitement wears down and common sense kicks in. That’s when you realise what a waste of money your purchase was and how the doll only clutters your space with nothing special. This is the whole scenario of the market today, to package all temptation in an advertisement and flash it to you until you eventually give in and buy it, even if it is an absolutely useless product to you.
Every small space to flash that advertisement to you is money. And this space is what social media platforms earn from. Earning money from your attention. They are the most ideal places for advertising because Social media platforms have mastered the art of creating a global village and bringing all things aesthetic and desirable in one place. Who makes this space aesthetic? Again, it’s us, the users. You create content and post there, waiting for views and likes, while the platform earns millions from every second you spend there!
The second and more decent way of cashing in on your attention is through premium aka paid services, which is simply to give you an ad-free experience. The platform itself lives only from the content and attention you give it, and now you are made to pay just so that you don’t spend that money elsewhere falling prey for an advertisement! Brilliant, right?
When we ourselves don’t realise how valuable our time is, there are many around us waiting to cash in on our time, cashing in on our attention — and this is popularly called the Attention economy. Money generated by capturing people’s attention. So next time when you spend an extra second on any social media platform, be wary of how valuable your time is!
